Reading Group Guide
Please enjoy this reading guide as if you are sitting down with Patricia Beal. She has specifically crafted this discussion guide in such a way as to fully share her heart and delve deeply into the many layers of this story with you, treasured reader.
1. Early in the story, a young man named Josh rescues Ana from the top of the theater’s marquee and places her safely on the ground. That’s the story’s first salvation. The Hebrew meaning of Joshua is “Jehovah is my salvation.” Joshua is also the original Hebrew form of the Greek name Jesus.
What were the other small rescues before Ana’s conversion? How was God’s hand visible in the lives of Peter, Claus, Ana, Lorie, and others early in the story?
2. Ana said that Peter was her rock, that as a young woman with Claus she’d felt like “the worthiest person on the planet because of his love.” She also said dancing at the Met was an attainable goal—her “holy grail.” She tries to fill the God-shaped hole of her heart with Peter and Claus, with ballet and the Met, but ultimately realizes that a relationship with God is the only way to live a fulfilling life. If she had been a better dancer or if there’d been less ups and downs in her romantic life, could she have found enough happiness to not notice God’s pursuit of her?
Was there a time in your life in which you tried to fill the God-shaped hole of the heart with misguided romantic and professional pursuits?
3. Two men with very different personalities are significant to Ana’s journey. Ana said that with Claus she felt like she had to always be doing something to feel good about herself and that with Peter she was more relaxed and happy to “just be.”
Who did you like best—Peter or Claus? Why?
4. Every person Ana meets on her journey to Jesus has a first name that starts with “J”—Jill, Josh, Ms. Jiménez, John, Jakob, Jack, Judah, Dr. Joel, Jackie, Frau Jutta Jöllenbeck, Jovana, Jacqueline—and Ana was Juliet.
That happened to me when I was journeying to Jesus. It’s as if He were jumping up and down, waving, and saying, “Me! I’m still the answer.”
Has something like that ever happened to you?
5. Luci’s name is a different story. It’s short for Lucifer, because he used her to put destructive ideas in Ana’s head—ideas that resulted in Ana and Claus sleeping together before they were married. Ana went from being content with being in separate rooms, to taking the initiative to sleep together when in Prague—a decision that she regretted in the morning on the bridge.
What was going through her mind on that bridge? What troubles was she able to recognize? What things did you come to realize first that Ana didn’t yet understand?
6. After the bridge scene we have the rainy day at the Prague church. Ana arrives by cab under dark skies, unsure of everything and somewhat fearful. She leaves with a map (a Bible!) and a timid sun trying to shine through the thinning clouds, and she begins to walk in the direction of the river.
How is this a turning point for Ana in the story?
7. What is the role of purity—or lack thereof—in the novel? Early on when Ana and Claus first talk, she asks him if things would have been different had they not slept together in their youth. What do you think? Would he have ended up in Germany with Hanna either way as he tells her?
8. Ana’s relationship with Peter provides pivotal changes in A Season to Dance. Their relationship, already challenged by Ana’s relationship with Claus, is challenged once again by his diagnosis with Huntington’s disease.
Where does Peter fit into God’s plan? Was Peter and Ana’s relationship a blessing in the end even though there was pain at first? How was he blessed in life? How about his death? Are you as convinced as Ana that his death was accidental?
9. How about Claus and his journey? He makes big mistakes, sets Ana up, and lies about it. Does he learn important lessons and mature? How so?
10. Ana is incredibly close with her dog, Barysh, much as many of us are with our pets. I wrote Barysh with a bleeding heart, as I was in the process of losing my very first dog in the same manner—a female boxer named Kyllian. She too had been left behind when her first family went to Germany, so when my husband and I went to Germany, we took her.
In real life, after a one-year struggle in which she lost thirty pounds of muscle, I had to ask the vet to put her down four months before my husband came back from a deployment. No amount of wishing for a natural death made it happen. In my novel, I gave Barysh the death I wish Kyllian had had. For Barysh death came “gentle and comforting, like a warm moonlit night bringing quiet peace.”
How do you feel about Barysh’s journey, his trip to Germany, and burial by the Rhine? Did Barysh enrich Ana’s journey and the novel? How so?
11. Ana has a loving relationship with her parents, but situations often become contentious with her mother. Early in the story she says she hates when her mom is right and there are some tense conversations between the two.
Have you ever experienced something similar? When Ana discovers Claus had indeed lied, she thinks her mom will say “I told you so,” but she doesn’t. Do you think she wanted to say it but chose not to? Did that conversation change their relationship? How so?
12. Ana didn’t have many close friends for most of the story, and the two she had, Lorie in her youth and Luci in Germany, ended up having a negative impact on her life. How do you feel about Ana’s friendships? How about your own? Have you ever had a friend lead you into trouble or flat out betray you?
13. What did you think about Lorie’s journey? She often speaks truth amid irrational statements and actions, and in the end she seems to make peace with her mistakes—with her boyfriend and with God. Why was she so mad at God? What do you think happened to her?
14. What character did you identify with the most? How did you like the preacher’s wife, Jacqueline? How about her mother-in-law, Jackie?
Did you feel that the Camp Dream scene was full of light because of Jacqueline’s passion and faith? If not, how would you describe it? Should we be more like her? Are we light to the world?
15. Did you enjoy spending time in Ana’s ballet world? What about the ballet world surprised you the most? How about her desire to be better than she was as a dancer and her desire to dance at the Met? Did you think she was going to make it? Why or why not? How did you feel about how and when it happened?
16. Symbols are significant in A Season to Dance. Ana’s light-blue cherry-printed scarf symbolizes her relationship with Claus. Claus has it every time he doesn’t have her, so should he have been concerned when she leaves it draped around Barysh’s photo in Germany during the trip to Georgia?
17. Ana’s sunflower seeds are a symbol of growth. They’d matured but it was “too early to harvest” when they fly to the US, but in the end the seeds had been planted, and the sunflowers are growing well. How else did flowers and planting reflect the action in the story?
18. Ana’s whole story is hidden in a seemingly meaningless paragraph:
A car alarm went off. A woman helped a man cross the street. A little girl ran ahead of her father. “Don’t you let go of my hand,” he said, crouching down to her level when he caught up with her—stubborn little fingers still squirming under his massive hand. The alarm stopped. The little girl let her father hold her hand.
The idea behind the above paragraph is to show Ana’s ending journey in A Season to Dance—from returning to a relationship with Peter, to his death, to her struggle and eventual relationship with God.
When Ana looks back at her life and her struggles, will she see that every erratic step had a purpose and brought her closer to where she needed to be? Or will she wish she’d done things differently?
19. The story opens with children, but Ana doesn’t want to teach. She is solely focused on her dreams of dancing professionally and on Peter. The story ends with children—she teaches children with disabilities with Claus and owns a studio “complete with a youth ballet company.” What changed, and what was redeemed?
A Season to Dance: the Book that Wrote Me
When I wrote the first line of my first novel in January of 2011, I wanted to get published because I was desperate to feel important.
I finished writing A Season to Dance that fall and hired coach Gloria Kempton via Writer’s Digest to look at the whole thing and tell me if it was any good.
She saw potential in the story of a small-town professional ballerina with big dreams, but explained I needed a clearer quest, more telling details, better scene structure, and better balance between sequels and dramatic scenes. I joined Gloria’s critique group and spent a year rewriting.
During that year, my husband got orders to move the family from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Germany, and he deployed for the sixth time soon after we settled on a lovely mountaintop in Idar-Oberstein.
When I finished rewriting, Gloria said the novel looked good and had everything a novel was supposed to have. But… “Something’s still missing. I don’t know what it is. We’ve covered it all.”
So of course I did what any writer desperate for validation would do. I told my coach that surely nothing was missing and that it was time to query. I hired a service to blast queries everywhere for me. I know… Shame on me… But God used that.
God’s Plan—Phase One
One query ended up with Mrs. Joyce Hart, of Hartline Literary. The novel wasn’t Christian—I wasn’t a Christian. She shouldn’t have received my query. But she did. She sent me a note saying she liked the storyline but that in Christian novels the protagonist couldn’t live with her love interest without being married. She was very kind and said that if she was missing the point and if the novel was indeed Christian, that I should resubmit explaining the living together piece.
When I read it, I laughed and rolled my eyes. I started typing a condescending reply. Something about Christian fairy-tale brains and me living in the real world, but I decided not to send it.
Days passed. A week passed. A month passed. And all I did was collect rejections. I became bitter. Bitterly sad at first. Then bitterly discouraged. And then bitterly ugly. I’d never been ugly before. Not like that.
See, up to that point, I’d believed that there was some kind of “god” and that somewhere, somehow, being good was right and that it paid off. But with the disappointments of the publishing journey those beliefs became a joke to me. I stood in the middle of my empty German kitchen—husband deployed, kids at school, my first dog had just died. And I looked at that inbox full of rejections and stated to whomever or whatever was out there: “God is dead.”
Mercy. Surely I said that to the “god” of my imagination, and not to the real God—God as He reveals Himself in the Bible. But I know that He was in that kitchen with me. And phase two of His plan was about to start.
Luke 22:31–32: “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
God’s Plan—Phase Two
As I lost all restraint and became the worst version of myself, God removed me from my green German mountaintop.
After less than eighteen months in Germany, we were sent back to America, to the Chihuahuan Desert in West Texas. To a place called Fort Bliss—a place from which you can see a Mexican mountain with the words: “Cd. Juárez. La Biblia es la verdad. Leela.” That translates to “City of Juárez. The Bible is the truth. Read it.” Gotta love it. God is good.
During the first six months back in America, I went to two secular writers’ conferences and met more rejection. My lack of restraint and my selfishness didn’t really make me happy. I wanted to go to therapy. I wanted a job. I still dreamed of that book deal that had to be just around the corner. I wanted, I wanted…
But nothing happened, and it didn’t matter how hard I tried to get help, get happy, and find any kind of relief for the pain I felt. Nothing. Happened. I’d never seen so many closed doors—slammed-shut doors—ever in my life. Even the shrink kept double booking, closing early, and somehow canceling on me. It was ridiculous.
The One Open Door
When God planted our family in the desert, He planted us two blocks from a friend from the Fort Benning years. A friend whose claim to fame was church shopping whenever the Army moved her family. I asked her to take me to church on the first Wednesday of January of 2013.
I fell in His arms. Surrendered, defeated, and dependent. Or what God likes to call—ready. I was born again two weeks later and was baptized on Super Bowl Sunday that February.
Gloria’s “Something Missing”
I had tickets to go to New York for the Writer’s Digest conference that spring, but sometime in March, it dawned on me: “You silly goose of a girl. You wrote a salvation story without the salvation piece.” My first coach, Gloria Kempton, had been right all along. There was something missing!
A Season to Dance isn’t just the story of a small-town professional ballerina who dreams of dancing at the Met in New York and the two men who love her. It’s also the story of a girl desperately trying to fill the God-shaped hole in her heart with often misguided career and romantic pursuits.
I deleted Mrs. Hart’s email that week. Yes, it was still in my inbox. Job well done, Mrs. Hart.
Now, I had work to do. I spent 2013 and the first half of 2014 rewriting the novel. Five ladies from my Sunday school read chapter after chapter as I produced them and cheered me on through that gruesome process. I couldn’t have done it without their support. God is good.
Jeff Gerke edited my novel in the summer of 2014 and had me read Robert McGee’s The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God’s Eyes. God is good.
I went to my first Christian writers conference, the ACFW 2014 in St. Louis. Two weeks later, Les Stobbe offered to represent me. God is good.
While in St. Louis for the conference, I also met Marisa Deshaies, who in early 2016 became the managing editor of Bling! Romance and decided to publish A Season to Dance. God is good.
My family got saved too. My husband in July of 2013. Our son in December of 2013. My mom in the fall of 2014. And our little girl just this past summer, the summer of 2015. God is amazingly good.
(“A Season to Dance: The Book That Wrote Me” first appeared in the International Christian Fiction Writers Blog.)